New ST-V-SW Site!

[Stark]

I really encourage everyone to follow the link from Praxis. It really has to be seen to be believed. They've resorted to even greater lengths of bending over backwards, twisting words; indeed, if they didn't so fervently believe they were right, they could never see their conclusion in this evidence. Classic 'ass-backward' unscientific mindset.

Any chance we could somehow archive their various canon policies, to compare and contrast later?

[Losonti Tokash]

So, it's the exact same thing, just more long-winded? What progress.

[Praxis]

Their "Warsie rebuttals" are things we barely even used- they left out all the good parts

I'll repost that link since this is a new page:
http://strek-v-swars.net/StarWarsCanon.html

Scary.

[Praxis]

Perhaps we need to begin emailing the author, 1 vs 1, and see if he can back up his own statements.

[Vympel]

They close down the board because they were getting thrashed in the canon thread, we produce voluminous quotes and rebuttals of their bullshit, and then they make this pathetically small canon page that addresses none of our criticisms. What a surprise! Don't waste your time with these assholes anymore.

[Rogue 9]

They apparently took the line of Mr. Guest. Didn't they used to admit the movie novelizations?

[Sonnenburg]

Their "Warsie rebuttals" are things we barely even used- they left out all the good parts

You say that like it should be a surprise.

His argument is simple enough to tear down for anyone who wants to bother:
1) They are cherry-picking their data. They use the Chee quote that shows the separation of canon into G and C level, but ignore the point blank statement that there is only one continuity. They take part of Sansweet's quote, but deliberately cut out the part of the EU being part of continuity.
2) They look at Lucasfilm policy as a universal law rather than a human creation which can change. If they disagree that Chee's statement is a change of policy (from what they seem to perceive as excluding EU to his statement of one continuity), ask them who should be contacted at Lucasfilm to confirm this fact. After all, anyone whoever champions truth shouldn't be afraid to confirm what they already know, right?
3) Ask them to explain why the Cinescape argument that ignores the "intrude" portion of the quote is not circular reasoning, when the proof is the very idea that only the films are true Star Wars. "The "intrude between the movies" part, warsies feel, shows that the EU is admissible to this debate, but they are wrong. Lucas is saying that the movie story is separate from the EU story, and since we know that the films = the only true canon, it is clear that what Lucas was saying is that even though the EU is in the timeline as the movies, it still doesn’t show that the EU is admissible."
4) If the conclusion is that the films are "the only admissible material to this debate," why is there a link to Darkstar's page where Darkstar uses novelizations to reach his conclusions (hyperdrive), with a note saying that they are "incredibly good breakdowns." Why would the website endorse a page which violates their own rules of evidence?

[Vympel]

The Star Wars canon policy is much more difficult to discern due to the many branches of the Lucasfilm organization and their many different statements.

Notice that they immediately try to manufacture a problem. Obviously, because simply taking a statement enunciating canon policy and running with it would lead to the inclusion of the EU, and we can't have that, they act like Lucasfilm is the Byzantine Empire.

The Sansweet Quote: Steve Sansweet, the Fan Relations guy at Lucasfilm, has given us a very clear view of the SW canon policy through Chris Cerasi of Lucasbooks. While it was actually Cerasi who said this, The statement was directly quoted by Sansweet, who apparently considers it true.

"When it comes to absolute canon, the real story of Star Wars, you must turn to the films themselves - and only the films."

This is merely a bit of the quote, but it is very important. Before we continue, I want to clarify something warsies just don?t seem to be able to grasp: my position on the SW canon policy is not based off one quote, although the above definitely is a large part of it. My position is based off of several quotes.

Back to the matter at hand. Obviously, the above means that the movies=absolute canon. Now, in this next bit, we learn more.

"The analogy is that every piece of published Star Wars fiction is a window into the 'real' Star Wars universe. Some windows are a bit foggier than others. Some are decidedly abstract. But each contains a nugget of truth to them."(emphasis mine)

Here we learn two things.
The real story of SW = the films.
These windows are foggy, but some contain nuggets of truth in them.

Warsies, for some reason, think that both of these conclusions aren?t backed up, but this is untrue, obviously.

Yes, this is their idea of an argument. Just repeat an allegation by the other side, state it's untrue, and move on. Notice they don't have the balls to actually enunciate what the "Warsie" position is.

First, note the bold area in the above quote, and second, here?s what we have from these quotes so far.

The absolute canon = the films.
The EU is a window into the "real" story of SW.
With this, we can safely conclude that the real story of SW = only the films

No more should have to be said,

Notice how he doesn't even begin to deal with how the EU is a window into the real story of Star Wars? How he doesnt' even quote the entire quote in question, since it buries his argument by stating what determines the "fogginess"? We all know the quote in question. He just says no more should have to be said.

but naturally, the warsies don?t give up there. They provide us with another Sansweet quote where he says that everything else besides the movies is "quasi-canon." There are a couple of problems with this quote

Notice how he doesn't even quote it, nor does he enunciate what the other "problems" are. Pathetic.

however, the major one being that Sansweet, at the time he said this, was a member of LL, so he had little power to override Lucas or LFL.

Yes, it's their ridiculous "override" bullshit, based on their laughable, ignorance-of-real-life idea that a member of a division of a company can just goes around contradicting their boss without consequence.

Yet one more warsie rebuttal to the above stems from this statement.

"As many fans know, when it comes to Star Wars knowledge, there are degrees of "canon." The only true canon are the films themselves. For years, Lucas Books has stayed clear of characters, events, or the timeframe that George might want to deal with in the Star Wars prequels. While such things as the Clone Wars, the fall of the Jedi, and Palpatine's rise to power were on that list, Boba Fett wasn't considered to be of major concern.

But like any great storyteller, George starts to develop a script and it sometimes takes on a life of its own, with characters coming to life and demanding a say. He has told us that Boba Fett will have a role in Episode II--just as Fett first appeared in the second film of the classic trilogy--so we may finally learn the bounty hunter's true genesis. As for whether Fett really survived his descent into the cavernous maw of the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi...what do you think?"

Steve Sansweet, LFL/Fan Relations, April 2000 - "Are we going to get more details about Boba Fett's past?", StarWars.com

I find it strange that the warsies believe that this proves their point, especially when it has the bit about the only true canon being the films.

Notice the implicit dichotomy he's drawing, that if the films are "true" canon, then everything else must be LIES. Even though the quote says there are DEGREES of canon.

Obviously the EU is part of another canon, or the continuity maintained by LL/LB (i.e. the Holocron).

Obviously? Just where the fuck can this douche find a quote indicating the existence of any such "other" canon in existence whatsoever? There is none whatsoever. Notice also he's committing the Darkstar tactic of equating "canon" with "continuity" as if they're interchangeable.

They feel that the part about LB staying away from anything Lucas might want to use somehow proves their point but this doesn?t make any sense.

Great debating technique there. Just ad lib the criticism, just say it doesn't make sense, and move on. Pathetic.

So LB stays away from the only true canon. That proves nothing.

No, it proves that you laughable "George Lucas was speaking like a Star Trek character" when he said "parallel universe" idea is stupid. The EU is not allowed to interfere with topics George Lucas wants to cover. If it was actually a "parallel universe", the EU would have no relevance whatsoever, and could do whatever it wants. Yet, as has been proven time and again, Lucas maintains a measure of creative control over the EU and dictates what it can and can't do.

George Lucas?s "other worlds" quote: George Lucas cleared up the issue of the EU inclusion with this quote.

"There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There?s my world, which is the movies, and there?s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe ? the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don?t intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don?t get too involved in the parallel universe.""

George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 2002 - as reported on the Cinescape site, from Cinescape Magazine

his clearly shows that the EU is separate from Lucas?s story of SW which = the movies = the absolute canon = the only true canon.

Wow, tell us something we don't know. Of course they're seperate. Their are degrees of canon. No one will ever claim that the EU is equal to the movies. We don't care if they're seperate. We care if it's admissible. Notice the implict, unjustified assumption that "seperate" must mean "seperate and INVALID".

he "intrude between the movies" part, warsies feel, shows that the EU is admissible to this debate, but they are wrong.

ROFLMAO. This guy is the shittiest debater I've ever seen. Just say they're wrong, and you've won.

. Lucas is saying that the movie story is separate from the EU story, and since we know that the films = the only true canon, it is clear that what Lucas was saying is that even though the EU is in the timeline as the movies, it still doesn?t show that the EU is admissible.

If you can make sense of this idiotic paragraph, you deserve a medal. Lucas admits his movies are a distinct period of time. He admits the EU intrudes in between that period of time. But then, the guy effortlessly "congeals" what Lucas is saying with other statements, by other people, about canon (when Lucas doens't even fucking mention canon in this quote, nor is he being asked about how canon works) to somehow demonstrate that the EU is not admissible. Even if we were to accept this nonsense, it still doesn't mean the EU is inadmissible. More on this a bit later.

The warsies only rebuttal to this comes from this:

Lucas: Ultimately, I'm going to probably move it into television and let other people take it. I'm sort of preserving the feature film part for what has happened and never go there again, but I can go off into various offshoots and things. You know, I've got offshoot novels, I've got offshoot comics. So it's very easy to say, "Well, OK, that's that genre, and I'll find a really talented person to take it and create it." Just like the comic books and the novels are somebody else's way of doing it. I don't mind that. Some of it might turn out to be pretty good. If I get the right people involved, it could be interesting."

George Lucas, Flannelled One, Sept. 2004, AP interview

The Warsies only rebuttal? An outright lie. He doesn't even mention the Splinter of the Minds Eye quote, where Lucas expresses his pleasure with the fact that other writer's are adding stories to the Star Wars saga, and that Star Wars is not solely limited to the stories hie has to tell.

The only thing that this shows is that Lucas is going to let EU authors make TV shows out of SW. Warsies also use the bit where Lucas says he doesn?t mind the EU to show that the EU is canon. This does not, however, override Lucas?s earlier statements that the EU is outside the movies, or, according to Sansweet, the only true canon. What this does show is that Lucas doesn?t mind the EU, and will even let the EU authors move it to TV. This doesn?t make the EU canon, or any TV shows that come out canon, it merely shows that Lucas doesn?t mind the EU.

The classic Darkstar-Trektard strawman- the issue is not whether the EU is canon, it is whether the EU is part of Star Wars, no matter what name it goes by. For all their verbal gymnastics, painstaking semantic assumptions (you know, "parallel universe but does intrude" means "parallel and inadmissible lies", "absolute canon and the real story of Star Wars" means "all the other degrees of canon are lies"), they cannot find one quote decalring the EU as not being Star Wars. Not one.

What this quote does demonstrate is to further show, on top of all his other quotes, that Star Wars is not solely encompassed by his films.

Chee: Chee is a LL employee, sometimes referred to as "the keeper of the Holocron." Despite the fact that he works at LL, and therefor has little power to override the statements of Sansweet and Lucas, they insist on wasting our time with this:

Yup, it's the "LL has gone rogue and is acting against Lucas' wishes" bullshit argument again.

Notice they construct a "canon policy" by making assumptions that Lucas is discussing canon in a quote where he doesn't even mention the word, by mind-melding other comments and working that into that assumption, and, as I have shown, assuming "parallel universe but does intrude" means "parallel and inadmissible lies", "absolute canon and the real story of Star Wars" means "all the other degrees of canon are lies" etc, and then, because Chee outright contradicts their interpretation, Chee must be contradicting George Lucas himself! It doesn't even occur to them that their fucking idiotic idea that Chee would go around contradicting what they think is Lucas' "canon policy" (never mind that he's never said the word canon) is prima facie evidence that their convulted interpretation is wrong.

While this appears, at first, to support the warsie position, if you think about it, it actually supports the trekkie side. Allow me to explain. "G" level canon is, as said, GL canon, or the movies. Then, they have the continuity, which both GL and Sansweet have deemed outside the real story of SW, or the movies. Therefor, this only proves that the continuity has a separate designation from the films. This gets them no closer to proving that the continuity is part of the real story of SW, or the movies.

LOL! Except for this unfortunate little fact:

a clarification is needed if the C and G level are separated, i.e. do they form independent canon or are both part of the overall continuity?

There is one overall continuity.

Dumbass.

[The Dark]

Here's the complete column that appeared in Star Wars Gamer in 2001, answered by Sansweet, who was with LucasFilm at the time.

There's been some confusion of late regarding the 'Infinities' symbol, and Star Wars Expanded Universe continuity in general. Terms like "canon" and "continuity" tend to get thrown around casually, which doesn't help at all.

When it comes to absolute canon, the real story of Star Wars, you must turn to the films themselves - and only the films. Even novelizations are interpretations of the film, and while they are largely true to George Lucas' vision (he works quite closely with the novel authors), the method in which they are written does allow for some minor differences. The novelizations are written concurrently with the film's production, so variations in detail do creep in from time to time. Nonetheless, they should be regarded as very accurate depictions of the fictional Star Wars movies.

The further one branches away from the movies, the more interpretation and speculation come into play. LucasBooks works diligently to keep the continuing Star Wars expanded universe cohesive and uniform, but stylistically, there is always room for variation. Not all artists draw Luke Skywalker the same way. Not all writers define the character in the same fashion. The particular attributes of individual media also come into play. A comic book interpretation of an event will likely have less dialogue or different pacing than a novel version. A video game has to take an interactive approach that favors gameplay. So too must card and roleplaying games ascribe certain characteristics to characters and events in order to make them playable.

The analogy is that every piece of published Star Wars fiction is a window into the 'real' Star Wars universe. Some windows are a bit foggier than others. Some are decidedly abstract. But each contains a nugget of truth to them. Like the great Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi said, 'many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.'

Returning to the question at hand. Yes, Star Wars Gamer is part of continuity, though as game material, there is room for interpretation. Only specific articles marked with the 'Infinities' logo within the magazine should be considered out of continuity.

Fans of the old monthly Marvel Star Wars comic will be heartened to know that LucasBooks does indeed consider them part of continuity. Decades of retrospect haven't been kind to all the elements of the comic series, but the characters and events still hold weight and are referenced in newer material whenever possible.

In order to allow unlimited freedom of storytelling, the Infinities label has been placed on the anthology series, Star Wars Tales. This means that not only can the stories occur anywhere in the Star Wars timeline, but stories can happen outside continuity. Basically, if an event happens in Tales, it may not have necessarily happened in the rest of the expanded universe. For some stories, the distinction is largely inconsequential. For others, it's the only way they could exist (for example, there's a Darth Vader vs. Darth Maul comic coming soon).

[FedRebel]

Or you could read that at sw.com http://www.starwars.com/community/askjc ... 10817.html

[FedRebel]

Well I just checked the site and the forums have now been deleted

[Mange]

What a bunch of stupid morons. They closed down their board just because they were afraid to discuss the issues out in the open, and then resort to writing a new page on a site that they said would be closed down. About Chee, I asked that question (if the C and G level canon forms separate or an overall continuity) as I thought the answer would be of rather big importance in the debate. As Chee gave the answer that fell in our favor, the trektards chose to ignore it (as well as other important quotes) and bends and twists the others.

[Admiral Bravo]

My god, thats all I have to say. Usually when there are new sw vs. st sites that are full of shit, I just ignore them, but this... this is a new low. I haven't seen crap as bad as this since darkstar's site. Of couse, most of the stuff on that site is from darkstar's site so that pretty much explains how pathetic it is.

[Darth Wong]

Here's a question: can someone who has to use such selective interpretation (ie- "analyzing" snippets of quotes but ignoring sections that refute their position) believe in his own mind that he's telling the truth? Or is it a matter of knowingly telling lies because they think there's some grand Crusade or social purpose which is served by attacking Star Wars, much like the people who deliberately spread misinformation in "abstinence only" sex education campaigns?

[Admiral Bravo]

Here's a question: can someone who has to use such selective interpretation (ie- "analyzing" snippets of quotes but ignoring sections that refute their position) believe in his own mind that he's telling the truth? Or is it a matter of knowingly telling lies because they think there's some grand Crusade or social purpose which is served by attacking Star Wars, much like the people who deliberately spread misinformation in "abstinence only" sex education campaigns?

It's most likely the second one. The creator of the site most likely is a darkstar fan and decided to show the "superiority of Star Trek over Star Wars" by making up a bunch of shit, or even worse, using "facts" from darkstar, which by the way he has done.

[Lord Revan]

Here's a question: can someone who has to use such selective interpretation (ie- "analyzing" snippets of quotes but ignoring sections that refute their position) believe in his own mind that he's telling the truth? Or is it a matter of knowingly telling lies because they think there's some grand Crusade or social purpose which is served by attacking Star Wars, much like the people who deliberately spread misinformation in "abstinence only" sex education campaigns?

why do fundies "forget" parts of the Bible or anyother evidence against them? Blind faith that they are right and others are wrong. the same thing applies to rabid trekkies. It's real life version of a dark side Force user, they don't think they are doing anything wrong. They on mission to prove that ST owns every Scifi universe ever made and if they have to use questionable mean succeed then so be it. (that's also why they fail, sure they're scifi universes that trek can own, but...)

[Alyeska]

Ok, this has gone on long enough. We came, we fought, we won, they closed the board. Repeat. This thread doesn't serve any real purpose anymore other then to gloat over a victory won years ago as it is. Thread closed.

[Alyeska]

For informational purposes. Straight from Strek vs Swars front page.

December 4, 2004: The Forum has been removed, but we hope to have it back up (in it's original form)in a month or so (hopefully less). Meanwhile we are working on some major rewrites to the sites main pages, stay tuned.

Whoever has copies of the forum should keep them safe to make sure they stay honest.